6.28

Right now I am curled semi-fetal position on my bed staring out of my left eye at my very spiky shoes (which are also on my bed for some reason.) And I’m wondering, “If you stabbed yourself in the eye with a stiletto, would it get rid of your migraine?”

And this is not even a “bad” one.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s not that I need to complain really. It’s just that I find it all rather amazing – that the human mind-body complex can be under so much duress and still function mostly normally.

For instance, I was up all night last night with a strip of metal jammed behind my eyes and slipped under the … {read more…}

Looking at my RX bottles, sitting there so smug on the bathroom counter fresh from thier mailing bag, I felt a surge of anger. A moment later I was sane and practical. “A lot of people take daily meds,” my inner reasoned person said, “it’s no big deal.” But for a moment I was pissed — angry at the brokeness in my body, at my over active mind, my hyper funtioning synods. I was tired of ruining my liver with shit that comes with warning labels and child resistant caps.

That moment was vital. It was real. So I document it here.

4-6-05

I’ve been thinking about the nature of sadness. It’s is a slippery viscous thing – sliding away when one expects it to be present, clinging to you when no actual cause is within reach. Whenever something terribly sad happens in my life, my wise, well meaning mentoring lovies advise me to be attentive to the sorrow, to sit with it as needed. And I do, usually. Only it’s never as deep as I expect it to be. It’s never, very…well…timely.

Today I am inexorably sad. Why, you ask? Well, because last night I found out that I am knitting wrong.

Apparently I twist and untwist my stitches oddly. “It’s the Eastern technique, you see,” explains my knitting teacher, “as opposed to … {read more…}

4/4/05

Today I called my friend. She sounds sort of perpetually sad lately– low grade functional depression, I call it. She says the priestess’ new book is mellower and wiser now that Anne is 50. She says that leaves the field wide open for someone a neurotic and jesusy as her.

Phew! My pal was being funny. Funny is good. If my pal wasn’t being funny, I’d fly over to her right away to begin force feeding her paxil.

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The house is incredibly quiet. Sharon is giving a massage and the girls are at school. I cannot rouse myself to do anything. I had a level 7 migraine (out of ten) yesterday and now a familiar pervasive stillness has settled in. … {read more…}

Anne Lamott says that there are two important things to remember when you are writing. One is that you only have to write a little bit at a time — as much as you can see say, through a one inch picture frame. One scene, one bit of conversation, etc. You just do it bird by bird.

The second thing to remember is that there is great value in shitty first drafts. Who cares if they are long and jumpy and emotionally overwrought? You can’t get a half way decent second draft, or a pretty good third draft, unless you write the really shitty first draft.

So in honor of the priestess herself, I have started a new category … {read more…}

First of all…who the hell’s ever heard of midwinter break.?! There’s winter break and there’s spring break and that should be it!

Then again, Eden does love to have “no rush” mornings, and I love that bit too. It’s 11am when they are bored and bickering that makes me nuts. Or at least, it makes me nuts when I am all migraine-y and medicine-y and decidedly not very Jesus-y. Ah! How I take comfort in all of Anne Lamott’s stories where she is swearing at her kid and slamming off the TV, or dragging him to something significant (damn it!) I especially love her Ash Wednesday tale here. It’s hard to feel that down on your parenting self … {read more…}

My grandmother’s house is full of treasures and my daughter, six years old, wanders through it with her very own camera taking pictures of the things that catch her fancy. “I love all the old fashinoned things in Great Grandma’s house,” she says. She takes a picture of a resin clock be-decked with pigs and chickens; the doll made of wooden spools lying in a tiny doll carriage; a framed photograph of my cousin’s new daughter, the charming baby Myra.

We have come to the Sierra Nevadas on a girl’s weekend. It is one of those trips where you are always thinking, “This might be our last time to see her.” Although when we arrive, a new arthritis medicine has … {read more…}

So, we are not having ThPM tonight. I am just too damn sick. I had this little break from my migraines, and I got all happy. But this month I’ve had them non stop for almost two weeks. Chemo didn’t help. Pills don’t help. Acupuncture, nope. If I could do yoga 24 hours a day, I think I’d be okay.

I’m losing the emotional battle right now.

I had this whole lovely plan for ThPm. First, we were going to read an awesome essay on Epiphany. Maybe “Only a Rumor” by Soren Kierkegaard in Watch for the Light, or maybe “Betty’s Manger Scene Collection” by Debbie Blue in Sensual Orthodoxy. Then we were going to have a time of … {read more…}

1) Eden has be coughing for two weeks and no one in the house has been able to sleep for the past 3-4 nights. Her fever was 103.9 but is down now that she is on antibiodics. She still snores and coughs all night. She’s been sleeping in our room to spare Catie and to spare Sharon, who’s room shares a wall with Eden’s bed. This means Paul and I aren’t sleeping.

2) And neither is Sharon…because Catie is having terrible nightmares. Last night she woke up screaming “it hurts! It hurts!” Sharon went in to get her and she wouldn’t open her eyes or wake up all the way. Later that night she had another nightmare and I went to … {read more…}

Here is Love vast as the ocean, loving kindness as the flood,
when the Prince of life our ransom, shed for us His precious blood.

On the mount of crucifixion fountains opened deep and wide.
Through the flood gates of God’s mercy, flowed a vast and gracious tide.
Grace and love like mighty rivers poured incessant from above,
Heaven’s peace and perfect justice kissed a guilty world in love.

It is the last week of December. The tsunami struck four days ago. Right now 70,000 people are dead. Tommorow that number will grow. Soon disease will set in and more will follow … {read more…}